Republic-Politia
It's normal that a work as this one will be translated and retranslated again and again, to many languages and with some varieties even to different translations in the same language. Translation is an art of itself to many of us ...
Even though I share this opinion myself, I was very puzzled since I discovered that a work as profound and important as this, has been in the very first start misinterpreted and I'm referring to something vital... the title itself. (!)
Plato titled this political and philosophical work "Πολιτεία "¹ (Politia).
Politia in ancient (as well as in modern) Greek language resembles with the English word "State".
Republic: Republic
While
Πολιτεία : (originates from the ancient greek word πόλις {polis}:city) state, all the political institutions of a country, in modern greek means society,or a big city
But as far as I am concerned, the problem is not with mistranslated words etc.
(I don't really believe it's a problem of misquotation). Plato didn't believe in the famous Athenian Democracy, it was the same system that led his teacher to execution. He had experienced it and criticized its deficiencies.
All ten books describe a completely new political organization of law, truth and education. Though Plato himself tried to create it in Sicily, he didn't completely describe the practical details of the political part of his plan.
Therefore, even though I don't want to go over my head on this without having read the translated version, I'm afraid that the translation could be open to misinterpretations and many philosophical truths could be left unrevealed, or even deformed.
1. switch to charset=iso-8859-7 to see the greek characters